August i, 1908.] 



THE INDIA RUBBER WORLD 



355 



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Vol. 38. 



AUGUST I. 1908. 



No. 5. 



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TABLE OF CONTENTS ON LAST PAGE READING MATTER. 



THE CURSE OF THE CALLOW CRITIC 



YOl'THFl'LXKSS is not a crinic. nur is callowiiess. 

 Init is is often verv trvin;.;-. The unfledged gawky 

 cockerel in time liecomes the cock of the walk. Then he 

 may strut and crow and be admired, but not until then. 



Each year a fresh crop of fledglings is graduated from 

 excellent technical schools and turned into the manu- 

 facturing establishments of the land. Fresh from well 

 equipped laboratories, crammed with exactness, burning 

 to prove themselves, they want to change something. 

 Some are set to testing rubber goods to see if they are 

 up to specification. With what infinite care do they 

 search for minute variations in color, texture, cure, 

 weight, tensile strength. With what joy do they reject 

 goods that are not in every respect what the specification 

 demands, no matter whether they will do the work or 

 not. 



How sevcreK' just thev are, and how they do clog the 

 wheels of progress in their reverence for non essentials. 

 If. in an order of black valves, one had a bluish cast 

 would it pass, supposing that it were perfect in every 

 other particular, that it answered every test, and suppos- 

 ing it were certain that it would outlast all of the rest? 

 Suppose its rejection would entail nuich delay and loss 

 of money ; would it be passed ? Xo, indeed. 



The callow critic, bless his honest boyish heart, isn't 

 trying to set things done ! He is posing before his 

 admiring self as a scientific, impartial judge, who knows 

 not mercy, common sense, or business. Some day he 

 will awake to his own absurdity and be a help to his em- 

 plover and to the manufacturer. Then he will get a bet- 

 ter job, and another fledgling will take his place and vex 

 the paternal rubber man. Like the poor, the callow are 

 alwavs with us. 



THE LONDON RUBBER CONGRESS. 



THERE are indications that the coming International 

 Rubber Exhibition will bring together in London 

 the most important assemblage of men interested in 

 rubber that has ever occurred in the history of the trade. 

 There will be producers of and dealers in crude rubber 

 and the materials used in connection therewith in the in- 

 dustry ; makers of the machinery used in handling rub- 

 ber, whether on plantations or in the manufacture of 

 goods ; representatives of every branch of the rubber 

 goods manufacturing interest; botanists, chemists and 

 other scientific experts whose work tends to the develop- 

 ment in one way or another of the rubber business. Of 

 course it is specimens of rubber and of appliances for 

 dealing with rubber that will be considered by the casual 

 observer as forming the exhibition ; these are the articles 

 to display which the Olympia building has been se- 

 cured, and which will figure in the exhibition catalogues. 

 But these displays without the attendance of practical 

 rubber men would be of little benefit. It is what we shall 

 designate as the coming Rubber Congress that will 

 count. 



There are still too many people who underestimate the 

 value of industrial exhibitions, and especially those of an 

 international character — people who consider such under- 

 takings failures if the receipts do not equal the cost. As 

 well might the public school system be voted a failure 

 because it costs so much and brings no direct income. 

 The industrial exhibition is educational in a broader sense 

 than any other modern institution, and is to be credited 

 to a large degree with the industrial progress of the last 

 half century. 



Not alone the country where an exhibition is held 

 profits — that is a mere incident — but the whole world, 

 more or less directly. The Philadelphia Centennial of 

 1876 doubtless was worth to America a thousandfold more 

 than it cost, but America did not profit alone. The par- 

 ticipation there of Germany, and the assertion by the Ger- 

 man commissioner that the machinery exhibits from his 

 countrv were ■"billig und schlecht" (cheap and nasty) led 

 to the awakening of the manufacturing population of that 

 country to their true standing in an important branch of 

 production, and to a serious and ultimate!)- successful 

 effort to retrieve their reputation. 



This mav seem a digression from rubber, but there 

 have been no rubber exhibitions in the past from which 

 to draw illustrations for the purpose of this article. As 



